Nintendo is releasing Majora’s Mask on 3DS. I’m really feeling nostalgic and excited and I don’t even know if I can emotionally deal with this. I’m overwhelmed. I spent a lot of time with this game when it first game out. I asked for it for Christmas in 2000, and once I got it, I started playing almost right away. The darkness of the game at first threw me off – it was different than Ocarina of Time, which I never did have for Nintendo 64 – I borrowed it from friends or from the video store. The only thing in Ocarina of Time which might be so dark is either the Shadow Temple or the well.

At that point in my childhood, I was 11 years old, and I had just started middle school. I had already started to isolate myself from the other kids, and they had already started to bully me. I didn’t really think much of it, to tell the truth. Their words and actions didn’t affect the rest of my life nor do I remember any of them today. Maybe in a sense they made me a more lonely person. In any case, Majora’s Mask is a game about loneliness. Many of the characters you help are lonely and have to forgive someone or other, or trust someone, or even move on in their lives and grow up in order to progress forward with their lives. However, you must reset the clock after three days or else the world will end. The people you helped previously do not remember being helped, and are stuck making the same mistakes over and over.

Playing through Majora’s Mask as a child helped me grow as a person. I’m really excited to play it again when it comes out on 3DS. It’s strange how things like this can hold so much influence. I like walking outside on rainy days because of this game: on the second day, it rains, and a cheerful tune continues to play.

This cheerfulness sometimes cuts through the pervasive atmosphere of loneliness, but not always. Termina, the world in the game, is vast and often empty, with few people scattered about… In any case, I’ve got to get back to work.